Backlinks allow you to navigate from a page on one site to another. It works in the following way. Someone posts a link to your site; then your site receives a backlink from there. You post it to another site, then a backlink from you appears there.
For example, this link leads to the “About us” section, that is, the link on the site itself leads from one of its pages to another. Usually internal links have 2 goals – to link site users to other relevant content on the same site and to help search robots in finding relevant content.
There are several ways to get them:
- forum backlinks – just find relevant forums with topics that are most suitable for your niche;
- guest posts – you need to create a list of sites where you are going to publish your articles; they must be unique and useful;
- social media and blogging platforms help you become a source of backlinks, additional traffic and increase your company’s visibility in search results.
You can also use crowd links. This is an exchange of “eternal” links obtained by the method of crowd marketing. The purchased links are posted on forums, public pages, and in the comments.
Backlink types and their value
There are several types of backlinks: dofollow, nofollow, sponsored, and UGC. They are valuable for 3 main reasons:
- Ranking – Search engines like Google see backlinks as a sign of trust. The more credibility your web pages have, the higher they will rank when delivering results for relevant search queries.
- Ease of finding – search engines can find new content by reviewing the pages they already know, which they check for new links. Search engines visit popular pages more often than unpopular ones. Therefore, they will find your content faster if they have backlinks to it from popular pages.
- Referral traffic – active hyperlinks to the original Internet resource are needed to direct people to what they are most interested in. When a user follows a link to your page, you get referral traffic.
The most important factor in building your link profile is how each link will benefit your site. Next, we will analyze each type in more detail.
Dofollow
Dofollow is the HTML attribute of the rel tag. It informs the search engine robots that this link can be followed. That is, when using the dofollow attribute, the bot can leave your site. For this reason, many web resource owners prefer to use nofollow for links that lead to external resources. This will allow you to keep the crawl process uninterrupted and not lose your link weight.
Nofollow
Nofollow links get their name from the rel=”nofollow” attribute, which instructs search engines not to follow the link. As a result, the link weight of the page to which the link leads is not transferred. You need to place nofollow links in such cases:
- to preserve your link weight by prohibiting its transfer to third-party resources;
- if necessary, to restrict the ability to add links to spam portals on comment pages (these links can worsen the ranking of your site, and your positions will go down);
- for redistribution of weight for internal pages and sections of your resource.
Nofollow links don’t go through PageRank, so don’t expect them to rank higher on the SERPs. However, they do affect your website promotion and link quality, helping to earn the trust of search engines in your site and making your link profile look natural.
Nofollow links can affect the appearance of dofollow links. A person can go to your site using a link from a third-party resource and share your content on their site by placing a dofollow link.
Sponsored
Sponsored is used to identify links that have been paid for. Let’s say advertisements, paid links, and so on.
With the sponsored attribute, Google can quickly distinguish “unnatural links” from regular ones. Since other search engines don’t recognize the specified attribute yet, it is better to add the nofollow attribute to such links.
UGC (user-generated content) links
The UGC should be used to identify links that are submitted by users in comments. The UGC attribute is used in links posted in content that users create, such as in the comments section.
If you use WordPress, you don’t need to worry about this attribute. The CMS automatically adds UGC and nofollow attributes to links that appear in the comment section on your site.
Backlinks quality
The main indicators of the quality of your site are high trust (trust of search engines) and ICS (site quality index). The higher the trust and ICS, the greater the weight of the link posted there. Sites with high levels of trust and ICS have good traffic, which can lead targeted traffic to your resource.
High-rated backlinks
Highly authoritative backlinks are those that come from reliable sources, for example, from an authoritative web resource that has earned trust, are relevant to the topic of the page, and are placed within the content correctly. Good links are posted on the sites of your region, in texts not shorter than 2000 characters.
Low-rated backlinks
These links are considered bad:
- posted on an irrelevant page;
- containing spam anchors that do not fit into the context;
- containing over-optimized and frequently repeated anchor;
- posted on a spammed resource.
Toxic backlinks come from low-quality, suspicious web portals, clearly violating Google’s recommendations.
Importance of the backlinks in the SERP
Linkbuilding primarily affects SEO. The quality of links on your site determines the position of your resource in the search results. Besides, the content becomes more relevant and authoritative. It also helps increase the time users spend on the site.
The importance of SEO stems from the fact that SEO specialists are responsible for positioning the content of their clients’ pages so that more people can visit their site. You can hardly think of anything better for positioning than mentioning their links on other sites.
Summary
Backlinks are a powerful and effective SEO tool. If you choose the right strategy for building your link profile, your site will surely rise to the very top of the search results. The use of backlinks gives a good result in the form of increasing the performance of your site and opening up new opportunities for business or project development.
